


The Thing in the Woods

by toyhto



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Infidelity, Loneliness, M/M, Minor Remus Lupin/Nymphadora Tonks, Twin Peaks AU, inspired by Twin Peaks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-12
Updated: 2017-11-12
Packaged: 2019-02-01 09:41:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12702252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toyhto/pseuds/toyhto
Summary: Special Agent Sirius Black comes back to Twin Peaks after thirteen years. Some things are still the same.





	The Thing in the Woods

**Author's Note:**

> I've been watching Twin Peaks _a lot_ lately, so here we go. This story is set in the fictional town of Twin Peaks, created by David Lynch and Mark Frost, but I'm pretty sure you don't need to know _Twin Peaks_ to read this story.

”Diane,” Sirius said and put the recorder on, ”it’s seven pm and I’m on my way to Twin Peaks. It’s a beautiful evening, no rain, clear sky. The moon is almost full. The woods are… you know how the woods are. Trees are magnificent here. I have still three more miles to go, or perhaps two and a half. I realize I’m driving quite fast. I’m also mildly anxious but the reason is unclear. I haven’t been here in thirteen years. I haven’t even heard from any of these people in thirteen years, but, to be exact, I haven’t tried to contact them, either. Life has been… you know how life has been. And, Diane, you remember that the last time I was here, we were trying to solve the murder of James and Lily Potter, a very nice couple or so I was told. Everyone loved them. Such a tragic and interesting case. The more I got to know about them, the more I thought that had I met James Potter alive, we might have been friends. Good friends. Very good friends. You know I don’t have many – I’m sorry, Diane. I thought I saw something moving in the woods. Probably just the wind. Well, anyway I was only 21 back then and it was my first real case. You remember how it stuck with me for a long time. So, I personally suggested that I could take this one. I just hope that things won’t get so strange this time. But I’m sure you’ve already guessed, Diane, that the case isn’t my only reason for wanting to come back here.”  
  
He held his breath and then turned off the recorder. He was almost in the town anyway, and also he had a vague idea that whatever he had been going to say, he would have regretted later. He drove through the town and said firmly to himself that he was here to solve the murder, which of course was true, but also for the last thirteen years, every once in a while, he had stopped to think about Twin Peaks with an odd feeling of having left something behind. The feeling hadn’t gone away with sleep, work nor sex, if it counted as sex what he did alone in his silent bedroom, curtains closed. He blamed Twin Peaks for that, too, even if he was never going to tell Diane that.  
  
But this time would be different. He was thirteen years older now and, arguably, slightly wiser or at least better-looking. He was confident or at least knew how to fake it. And he already knew something about this place.  
  
He drove through the town. It looked pretty much the same. Some buildings had been repainted or perhaps his memories were fading into black and white, which would actually have explained a lot. He stopped the car in front of the sheriff’s department, drew a few deep breaths and wondered if he ought to inform Diane that he had arrived, but it seemed pretty obvious. He got out of the car and closed the door.  
  
He glanced at the moon before walking through the front door. The last time, he had barely noticed it but later he had had dreams with a full moon hanging low in the sky and the woods dark all around him and his heart beating but not necessarily from fear. He had told himself that he had been young and the case had been interesting and terrifying and the town had been odd and of course it would stuck with him. But sometimes in the dreams he was certain he was awake, and then, when he woke up, he was certain he was dreaming.  
  
“Agent Black,” said the woman from behind the counter. She was looking at him as if she was pretty sure this wasn’t happening.  
  
“Molly,” he said and smiled. He knew his smile still looked almost the same as when he had been 21, only he had new lines around his mouth and something dark lingering in his eyes that he never seemed to completely get rid of, no matter how happy he was. Molly didn’t seem to notice the difference. He nodded and stayed still, and Molly stared at him and then slowly smiled.  
  
“Agent Black,” Molly said, “it’s really you. I don’t believe this. You haven’t been here in ages. We all thought you’d come back sooner, especially Remus, although he’d never admit it. Don’t tell him I told you.”  
  
“Of course not,” he said. Perhaps he’d mention it to Diane later. “Molly, I’m here for the case.”  
  
“Sure you are,” Molly said. “I knew you’d come back. I’m pretty sure Sheriff Lupin is in his office. Would you like me to tell him that you’re here?”  
  
“Don’t worry about it. I know where his office it.”  
  
“He’s going to be so surprised.”  
  
“Thank you, Molly,” he said and glanced at the general direction of Remus’ office. His heart was beating oddly fast.  
  
“But glad,” Molly said, “I’m sure he’s going to be very glad, although perhaps he won’t show it if he can help it. You know how he is. _Was_. How he was thirteen years ago. Well, he hasn’t changed, not more than any of us, I think. I’m going to call Arthur and tell him that you’re here. He’s going to be so happy. He’s been pretty upset about all this, you know. Surely you remember how he is with brutal murders.”  
  
“I remember,” he said and fixed his thoughts on Arthur. “I’ll probably see you in a few minutes, Molly.”  
  
“I suppose Remus is going to spend some time telling you what’s happened,” Molly said, “you know, in thirteen years. If you can get him to talk. I’m so glad you’re here.”  
  
“I’m going to go now,” Sirius said and started walking. Molly said something about making coffee, but he couldn’t turn now or else he’d probably lose his nerve. He walked straight to Remus’ door and knocked and then, when no one answered, he opened the door and realized he had remembered it all wrong and he was now standing in the cleaning supply closet. It felt like a sign but he refused to think that, among many other things, so he turned and tried again.  
  
He found Remus’ office at the end of the corridor. The door was slightly ajar. He pushed it open and gathered all the words that he definitely hadn’t been practicing on the way here, and then Remus raised his gaze from a pile of papers and looked at him.  
  
“Hello,” he said. It wasn’t what he had been meaning to say, but all things considered, he thought it was pretty well done.  
  
“Sirius,” Remus said and blinked, “I mean, Agent Black.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“I heard you were coming,” Remus said.  
  
“Yeah,” Sirius said again and took a deep breath. “I asked for this case. Because, you know, I’ve been here before.”  
  
“I thought that you might,” Remus said in a voice that suggested he had thought Sirius definitely wouldn’t. “So, I guess they’ve informed you about the… case.”  
  
Sirius pulled his shoulders back. He felt like Remus was kind of looking at him but also, in some ways, not looking at him, so in that sense everything was how it had been in 1981, when they had last seen each other. He remembered disturbingly well that he had wanted to take a firm grip on Remus’ shoulders and make Remus look him in the eyes. “Yes. I read the file. Have you found out anything?”  
  
“Not really.”  
  
“Do you think it’s the same than the last time?”  
  
“I don’t think it’s Peter,” Remus said, now looking at everything else except Sirius. “But when it comes to the rest of it, I don’t know.”  
  
“But you don’t still know where Peter is.”  
  
“I think he’s dead,” Remus said and sighed. “I hope he’s dead.”  
  
“So, he’s not –“  
  
“I haven’t seen him since that night,” Remus said. The clock was ticking loudly on the wall. “You remember that night, don’t you?”  
  
“Yes,” Sirius said, because Remus was watching him with a look that said _tell me you remember so that I know it happened._ He had felt that way himself every once in a while over the years. Sometimes he had wondered if the night had been a dream as well. And sometimes he had wondered if everything that had happened ever since was a dream, because he couldn’t remember being as sharply alive as at night in October 1981 when he and Remus had followed Peter through the woods. This had happened a few hours after they had finally figured that it was Peter, it _had_ to be Peter. They had driven to Peter’s place and Remus had been pale and quiet and Sirius had felt like he had broken something that could never be fixed. And then, when they had got there, they had knocked on the door and seen Peter sitting by the window, something in his eyes, something that didn’t belong here, and then they had known they weren’t looking for Peter, not exactly. Peter laughed in a way that rang rang rang in their heads. When Peter ran, they followed for what felt like hours but must have been thirty minutes. Later, Sirius realized his clock had stopped. He tried to get it fixed but nothing worked.  
  
When they were sure they had lost Peter in the woods, they turned and almost lost themselves as well, but Remus kept walking and in the morning they reached the road. They walked to Peter’s place and found out that it had been burned. Then they drove back to the sheriff’s department and sat in Remus’ office, not speaking a word, and Remus kept watching Sirius, and for what felt like a long time Sirius was certain Remus would kiss him.  
  
 “I remember,” he said now and Remus flinched as if perhaps he’d wished it would have been a dream after all.  
  
“Good,” Remus said. “I don’t know what happened to Peter. Not anymore than you do.”  
  
“So, no one has seen him,” Sirius said and fixed his eyes on Remus. Of course Remus hadn’t kissed him.  
  
“No. There’s not even rumors. It’s like he vanished.”  
  
“He might still be… whatever he was.”  
  
“I think he’s dead,” Remus said again, slightly louder this time. “But whatever got to him the last time is still alive. It must be. I don’t think a thing like that can die.”  
  
“So we’re looking for a ghost”, Sirius said, “again.”  
  
“It’s not a ghost,” Remus said and let out a ragged sigh, “too bad. Listen. You’ve come a long way. Do you want to sleep over night before we talk about this?”  
  
“Tell me now. I want to hear how you tell it.”  
  
“Okay. Do you want to sit down?”  
  
He sat down. The chair creaked. Remus was watching him and that went under his skin, just like before. He shifted his weight on the chair and Remus’ eyes followed.  
  
“The boy,” he finally said.  
  
Remus flinched. “Yeah. The boy. Cedric Diggory. We found him in the park near to the school.”  
  
“We?”  
  
“Harry,” Remus said and bit his lip. “Harry Potter found him. They are… were both in high school. Cedric was a few years older. Harry called me.”  
  
“And Harry is –“  
  
“James and Lily’s son. Yeah.”  
  
“It doesn’t feel like a coincidence.”  
  
“No, it doesn’t,” Remus said, sounding very tired. “So, Cedric Diggory was a nice kid from what I heard, never got into any kind of trouble. He was in the sport team, he played… soccer. It was soccer. Had a girlfriend, too, a clever girl named Cho. Cedric’s parents are taking all this… well, as you can imagine.”  
  
He cleared his throat, but only because Remus left a long silence out for him.  
  
“Yeah,” Remus said, “I can’t imagine that either. Perhaps it’s the kind of a thing that you really can’t know anything about unless you go through it yourself.”  
  
“He died of a heart attack?”  
  
“Yeah. Just like…”  
  
“Just like James and Lily.”  
  
“It’s like his heart just stopped. No reason at all.”  
  
“But it’s a murder investigation,” Sirius said, “so we’re thinking that  –“  
  
“Yeah,” Remus said and rubbed his nose, “we’re thinking that it’s happening again. There’s absolutely no reason for why Cedric Diggory’s heart should have stopped. But we’re kind of trying to keep it from the news. People were so nervous the last time, and everyone had a theory, and they all tried to help, and it’s just… I’d be glad if I didn’t need to deal with that.”  
  
“I know,” Sirius said. He remembered. Remus Lupin had been a young sheriff, age of 21, only put into that position because Albus Dumbledore had wanted to retire and go to the mountains to live with his partner that no one talked about, and there hadn’t been anyone else. Remus had told Sirius this once when they had tried to question the owner of the hotel about the deaths and it had been a complete dead-end and they had been tired and then Sirius had finally asked _how come that you’re sheriff when you’re so young._ Later, Remus had asked _how come that you’re a special agent when you’re so young_ and he had said something vague about his brother that had gone missing and never been found.  
  
“Sirius?” Remus said now, slowly standing up.  
  
“Yes?”  
  
“I think we should have some sleep. We can start digging into this tomorrow.”  
  
“Of course,” Sirius said and remembered not to look disappointed. Perhaps he could have asked about something else, _how’ve you been, it’s been thirteen years, what’ve you been up to,_ but Remus was already walking towards the door and then stood there, holding the door and looking a little past him. He walked through the door. Remus followed him to the corridor and then walked beside him. Their steps still matched. That was one thing that had stuck with him: the thought of Remus and him walking through the empty corridors, side by side, their arms almost touching but never quite. He’d tried to change the memory but that had turned out to be impossible.  
  
“So,” he said and swallowed, “how’ve you –“  
  
“Remus,” someone called, a young woman, medium height, medium build, short blue hair, sharp eyes and a quick smile. She was standing in front of the counter and Molly Weasley was standing on her side, looking slightly uncomfortable. “I thought you’d be late.”  
  
“Sorry,” Remus said. He wasn’t using his sheriff voice now. “Actually, I think Agent Black and me are going to have to go over a few more things.”  
  
_What,_ Sirius thought but swallowed it. Remus was standing so close to him that their arms almost brushed against each other.  
  
“So I thought,” the woman said and smiled. “Just call me later, okay?”  
  
“I will,” Remus said.  
   
“And you,” the woman said and turned to Sirius, “you must be Special Agent Black. I’ve heard of you. I think we’re somehow related. My name is Tonks, Nymphadora Tonks.”  
  
“Nice to meet you, Nymphadora –“  
  
“No,” the woman said and then sighed, “well, yes. But call me Tonks. Everyone does if they want to keep in good relations with me. I think my mother is your distant cousin.”  
  
Sirius opened his mouth.  
  
“Or not,” the woman said, “I’m not sure. I could ask her. We’re going to have dinner with her in Saturday. Anyway, I think I should be going. Molly, you coming?”  
  
“Yeah,” Molly said, “absolutely. Good night, sheriff. Good night, Agent Black.”  
  
“Good night,” Sirius said.  
  
“Good night,” Remus said, but there was something odd in his voice.  
  
They stood still until both women had walked through the doors.  
  
“A pleasant woman,” Sirius said. “Seems very nice.”  
  
“Yeah,” Remus said, looking intently at the doors that had been closed for more than ten seconds.  
  
“So, she was here because…”  
  
Remus glanced at him. “She’s my –“  
  
His heart felt heavy which was absolutely stupid, but there was nothing to be done except to go straight through. “Your girlfriend?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“Really?” he said without meaning to.  
  
Remus’ shoulders dropped a few inches. “Yeah. Come on. I’ll show you the report from the autopsy.”  
  
“I thought we were done for the night.”  
  
“Are you tired?”  
  
_Yes,_ he thought. _For thirteen years I’ve thought about coming back and I never found a way and now that I did…_ but he couldn’t finish that sentence. And Remus wasn’t really looking at him anyway. “No. Show me that report.”  
  
“It’s in my office,” Remus said and started walking. Sirius followed him back to the office as if someone was rewinding the tape, back and forth. Perhaps that was why he’d come back. Remus shut the door after the and sat down in the chair just like before, and Sirius did the same just like before, and then they sat in silence. He kind of thought Remus might have something to say to him but Remus was watching through him with a focused look on his face.  
  
Finally Sirius took a deep breath. The silence felt heavy and elastic and he had to concentrate to get through. “So, did you have something –“  
  
“Do you have a room,” Remus said and swallowed, “in the hotel?”  
  
“Yes,” he said and thought about the hotel in which he had stayed the last time, but he couldn’t tell which ones were the memories and which were the dreams he’d later had. “But I haven’t, you know. Checked in yet.”  
  
“I have a room,” Remus said. “Maybe it’d be practical. We could talk about the case.”  
  
 “It’d be –“  
  
“You wouldn’t need to drive to the hotel.”  
  
“Of course,” Sirius said, and his words seemed to run too fast or perhaps everything else had slowed down, “that sounds great. Only I thought you might live with –“  
  
Remus fixed his eyes on Sirius but didn’t say it.  
  
“Tonks,” Sirius said finally.  
  
“No,” Remus said and grabbed a paper from the pile.  
  
“Okay,” Sirius said, as casually as he could but it came out kind of nervous.  
  
“Perhaps we should go,” Remus said. “We could stop at the diner and eat something.”  
  
They drove through the city, both in their own cars. Sirius saw Remus’ headlights following him through the dusk, and sometimes the light was all that he saw and sometimes he also saw Remus’ old Toyota. When they stopped in front of the diner, he was gladly surprised he hadn’t lost Remus in the way. But Remus barely looked at him, walked straight in and ordered a sandwich, and they ate and then went to Remus’ place which was tiny and smelled of dust and coffee. The less they talked the clumsier Sirius felt. He dropped his toothbrush to the sink. He didn’t know where to stand, when Remus opened the cupboard doors, looking for linen. Then Remus told him the same details about the case again, probably just to say something, and he listened carefully and also watched Remus’ mouth moving.  
  
And then finally Remus went to bed and Sirius stayed on the couch in the tiny living room with a television that probably was from the seventies, and curtains that didn’t close all the way. From the couch he could see moon hanging low above the black shapes of trees. There was a clock on the wall and it went tick tock tick tock and all the way from the beginning, until finally he realized he was sitting in Remus’ office again, and Remus was younger but also sadder and looked at him as if trying to decide whether to kiss or not, and then he knew it was a dream.  
  
  
**  
  
  
In the morning, he woke to the sound of the bedroom door opening slowly as if Remus was trying to see if he was still there. He sat up in the couch and Remus walked straight past him to the kitchen with his brown hair sticking into odd directions and his blue and green pullover hanging a bit crookedly on the shoulders. It had taken Sirius an embarrassingly long time in 1981 to realize that James and Lily Potter had been Remus’ best friends. And when he had, he’d watched Remus, trying to see how Remus was coping with it all, but Remus had gone through the whole investigation with the same focused look on his face, only sometimes he’d looked impossibly sad.  
  
“Molly will make coffee at the station,” Remus said without looking at him, “if you prefer going straight there.”  
  
“No,” he said and tried to stop thinking about Remus. “I mean, I wouldn’t mind drinking coffee here.”  
  
“Fine,” Remus said and turned, Sirius tried to tell from his shoulders what he was thinking but as always, it was impossible. Anyway Remus had asked him to come here, more or less. That had to be a good sign, he thought and then pushed the thought away because what the hell it was supposed to be a sign of. He went to the bathroom and brushed his teeth and took a brief and uncomfortably cold shower and then realized he had let his clean clothes in the living room, so he had to walk back there and pull the clothes on with his back turned to Remus, which had to be a better idea than retreating back to the bathroom. Remus didn’t say a word. When Sirius had his shirt and trousers on, he turned again. Remus was watching him with a cup of coffee in both hands.  
  
“So,” he said a little later, when they were sitting at the table and drinking coffee and he felt slightly more normal, “you have a –“  
  
Remus stared at him and he wanted not to ask after all, but it was too late. Sometimes he felt it was too late and had been too late all along, even though nothing had actually happened to begin with. But perhaps he’d just read too many sad novels when he’d been young.  
  
“Tonks,” he finally said, because of course Remus wasn’t going to say it.  
  
“Yeah,” Remus said.  
  
“How did that -,” Sirius took a sip of his coffee that was still too hot, “- happen?”  
  
“What do you mean?”  
  
_Fucking hell_ , Sirius thought and Remus flinched as if he’d heard. “I mean, the last time you didn’t… you weren’t… I didn’t think you’d…”  
  
“What’re you trying to say?” Remus asked in an odd, heavy voice.  
  
“Nothing.”  
  
Remus stared at him for a few seconds and placed his left elbow on the table and looked through the window. There was still mist lingering on the ground, slowly climbing up the trunks of the trees. It had been raining at night and the droplets of water were frozen to the glass. “I don’t know how it happened,” Remus said. “I like her.”  
  
“Of course you do.”  
  
“But not like,” Remus glanced at him, “it’s not like in the movies. If that’s what you’re thinking about.”  
  
Sirius had absolutely no idea what he was thinking about. “It never is.”  
  
“Really?” Remus said and looked at his own hands. “I wouldn’t know.”  
  
_Why_ , Sirius thought. But he couldn’t have known it either. He had maybe been in love in 1977, when he’d dated Catelyn Waters who’d lived across the street, but it had lasted for three weeks and later he’d thought it had probably been about his new car and driving around in the evening and having someone to talk to and to kiss and to hold, which had made him feel he wasn’t alone. After he’d come back from Twin Peaks in early November 1981, he’d tried hooking up with a man for a couple of times in the coming years but it hadn’t really worked out, because all of them had stared at him with Remus’ eyes. Kissing had been odd and sex had been odd at its best and usually he’d given up at the moment when someone’d tried to open his zipper, because their voice was wrong and their hands were wrong, or perhaps Sirius was the one who was wrong. But anyway he wouldn’t know. Or if it was like in the movies for him, it would be sheriff Remus Lupin staring at him in the odd vague dreams that sometimes got sharper, until he woke up and couldn’t tell what was the dream and what wasn’t. But of course he couldn’t say this to Remus.  
  
“She’s nice,” Remus said.  
  
“I’m sure.”  
  
“And clever.”  
  
“I’m not asking –“  
  
“Do you remember -,” Remus said, “- the night when we lost Peter in the woods and came back and stayed in my office?”  
  
“Yeah,” Sirius said. He was pretty sure they’d talked about this already or perhaps it’d been in a dream. Or perhaps he was going back and forth and things that happened didn’t happen in the right order, which would have explained a lot. When he had come home from Twin Peaks the last time, he’d stared at the road and at the woods and there had been this ache inside of him that slowly grew into a hole, and he’d thought _I’m in love with him,_ only nothing had happened, so perhaps he’d been trying to remember something that hadn’t happened yet.  
  
“We should go,” Remus said and stood up. Sirius thought _wait, tell me about the night when we lost Peter_ in the woods, but Remus didn’t look at him, so he nodded and stood up and pulled on his coat and followed Remus through the door which led to the hallway which led to the front door which led to the car which led to the road that’d take them to the sheriff’s department.  
  
  
**  
  
  
“Sheriff Lupin,” Molly said and looked at them over the counter, “Agent Black, good morning. I have Amos Diggory waiting in the conference room.”  
  
“Thank you, Molly,” Remus said.  
  
“And coffee and donuts.”  
  
“Thank you, Molly,” Sirius said and followed Remus down the corridor. “So, Amos Diggory is –“  
  
“Cedric’s father,” Remus said and opened the door. There was a short man standing in the corner, grabbing his own sleeve as if there was nothing else to hold on to. “Amos. Good morning. I’m so –“  
  
“I know, I know,” the man said with a sigh and then saw Sirius and blinked. “Who’s this?”  
  
“Special Agent Sirius Black from the FBI,” Remus said.  
  
“Nice to meet you,” Sirius said, stepped forward and squeezed Amos’ hand, but the man didn’t seem to really notice.  
  
“The same man,” Amos said, “than at the last time.”  
  
“The same man,” Remus said.  
  
“I am so sorry about your loss,” Sirius said to Amos, who was looking at him with a slightly bewildered look. “I have of course read your statement already, but if there’s something you wish to add, I’d be more than happy to –“  
  
“But the last time it was -,” Amos said and bit his lip, “it was –“  
  
“We don’t know, Amos,” Remus said. “At this point, we don’t know anything. But we asked for a FBI agent because this is…”  
  
“My boy”, Amos said and glanced at Sirius, “was only eighteen. And he is.... he was so good, he was the captain of his football team and he was brilliant with Math and he fixed everyone’s bicycles in our street and he –“  
  
“We know, Amos,” Remus said and placed his hand on Amos’ shoulder, and Sirius watched Remus’ hand and couldn’t help it, it was as if the time stretched again and Remus fingers moved really slowly, until finally Remus pulled his hands away. It seemed possible that Remus had never touched Sirius but still he had this feeling as if someone was holding him by the wrist, slightly too firmly but not uncomfortably so, and he felt his own pulse beating against Remus fingers and -  
  
“I know you’re doing everything you can,” Amos said in a voice filled with grief, intent genuine pain that cut through whatever was lingering between Sirius and Remus, who was glancing at him like he knew what Sirius was thinking about. “But perhaps there’s something else that you could do?”  
  
“We’re trying, Amos,” Remus said in a sad voice. “Now, would you like some coffee?”  
  
“No, thank you,” Amos said. “I think I have to go to work. I’m not sure. They told me to stay at home for a few days and I’ve done that and –“  
  
“Have a donut,” Remus said, “please. And then go home. We’ll call you if there’s anything new.”  
  
“I know you’re a good man, Sheriff Lupin,” Amos said, and Remus said nothing.  
   
Mr. Diggory ate a donut with a look of grief never leaving his voice and then went. They walked to Remus’ office and left the door half open because Molly was talking to Mr. Diggory about how little sense there was in life and how crying was sometimes good. And then Arthur came and told Mr. Diggory about the lawnmower he’d fixed, only now it was slightly better, and then in the middle of the sentence Arthur seemed to remember what had happened to Amos Diggory and why the man was in the sheriff’s department at the first place. Remus closed the door when Arthur kept saying he was sorry and Amos kept saying it didn’t matter and the more they talked, the more upset they seemed.  
  
“Have you known him for a long time?” Sirius asked and nodded towards the closed door.  
  
“Yeah,” Remus said, “the family’s always lived here.”  
  
“You don’t think –“  
  
“No.”  
  
“Last time,” Sirius said even though he kind of didn’t want to, but it was lingering on his mouth already and besides, Remus had to have thought about it, “last time Peter was the one who missed them most. Peter and you.”  
  
“Don’t,” Remus said, looking at him with tired eyes.  
  
“I just thought,” he said, “perhaps it’s just how that thing works.”  
  
“We can’t assume that,” Remus said. “We don’t know anything yet. It could be just a regular murder. It’s possible. It doesn’t have to be… the thing in the woods. And you haven’t…”  
  
“What?”  
  
“You haven’t had any dreams,” Remus said, “have you?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“Because last time you did. About Peter.”  
  
“Yes,” Sirius said. In the dreams, Peter had followed him with a haunting look on his face, a look that Sirius had never seen awake except at the last night he’d spent in Twin Peaks, the night when they’d lost Peter in the woods. But he had also had dreams about Remus and him in the woods, somewhere deep where the trees were so huge he couldn’t see the sky and so dark all the light vanished, and where there was a cabin in which they kissed in a bare floor. At the time, it had seemed like a weird erotic dream, the kind you were supposed to have when you were a teenager, and he had laughed at it and wanked at it and then tried to forget about it. But later, he thought he could remember how Remus’ skin had smelled.  
  
“If you do,” Remus said now, “if you have weird dreams, tell me.”  
  
He was thinking about lying on his back on the floor and Remus’ knee in between his thighs and Remus’ face above him, lips bitten red, hair messed up, that odd scar on his neck visible so that Sirius could easily kiss it. “Of course.”  
  
“Good,” Remus said and looked like he knew, and Sirius wondered if perhaps Remus had had the same dream.  
  
“How about his mother?” Sirius asked, because he definitely needed to think about something else.  
  
“Elaine Diggory. I talked to her. She was sleeping at their home when he died. They both were, her and Amos.”  
  
“They were asleep for the whole night?”  
  
_Don’t go there_ , Remus’ eyes said. “Pretty much.”  
  
“Well,” Sirius said, “I don’t think we have any clues. There was nothing odd about Cedric Diggory. No one had a reason to kill him. Perhaps we should start by figuring out exactly what he did the last day.”  
  
In 1981, he had come to Twin Peaks as a young FBI agent who was kind of brilliant at what he did even though no one could tell why, and who firmly believed everything could be explained. He thought the trees were terrific and the town was idyllic and it was wonderful that everybody seemed to have a memory about James and Lily Potter who of course had been mysteriously murdered, which was sad, but surely he could figure out who had done it. He couldn’t. He tried but every piece of the puzzle that he found kept shifting every time he tried to grab it.  
  
And Remus Lupin, who was first quiet and wore too large weird-colored pullovers and drank coffee and ate donuts all the time and took everything with a kind of sullen patience, became more intriguing when the days went by, as it also became clearer that whatever had killed James and Lily Potter might not be, strictly speaking, human. Sirius wanted to solve the case because he wanted to impress Remus, but it was as impossible to solve the case as it was to impress Remus, and in the end Remus’ way of looking at him got softer anyway. Remus started smiling. Remus started laughing at his jokes and then sometimes he’d look surprised and a bit frightened about the fact that he’d laughed.  
  
Now they drove to the diner and he was still trying to make Remus laugh, only it seemed he’d lost his touch or perhaps he’d only imagined it in the first place. Remus was looking through the window and wherever the woods narrowed around them and leaned above the road, the silence grew heavier and Sirius gave up with the jokes.  
  
They ate at the table in the corner, and in the background Nancy Wilson sang until the record started skipping beats. An old woman with a sharp stare came to ask about the investigation. She seemed to know everything they did and said they could come over for tea. Afterwards Remus told him that the woman was Minerva McGonagall and she lived deep in the woods, apparently because she didn’t like people.  
  
“Maybe we should go,” Sirius said.  
  
“Maybe,” Remus said and started talking about fishing.  
  
_We aren’t looking for anything,_ Sirius thought hours later when they’d talked to Cho Chang, who was a very clever girl and who also seemed to know something strange was happening, and to Elaine Diggory, who looked Sirius in the eyes and seemed pretty much as sane as people went, in any case saner than Remus or he. They searched Cedric’s room which held no secrets besides a picture of a very good-looking and mostly naked male football player hidden under the mattress. Sirius showed the picture to Remus and Remus blinked at him with a blank look on his face, so he put the picture back and never mentioned it again. He was pretty sure they were looking for another kind of a secret, or probably they were looking for whatever thing lived in the woods, the thing that could not be named nor found.  
  
“We aren’t really trying to solve this,” he said later, when they were back in Remus’ flat and Remus had opened a bottle of beer and was sitting on the couch on which Sirius was going to sleep the night. Remus glanced at him but didn’t deny it, nor did he ask what Sirius had meant, so he explained anyway. “It was different the last time. Back then, in the beginning we really thought we could find whoever had done it. But this time we know what it is.”  
  
“No,” Remus said, “we don’t know that.”  
  
“I think that what we’re doing here,” Sirius said with an edge in his voice, “is that we’re waiting for it to appear. And when it does, we don’t have a fucking clue what to do.”  
  
Remus stared at the bottle.  
  
“Last time,” Sirius said, “I saw it in Peter’s eyes. I don’t know how but I saw it stare at me through him.”  
  
“We can’t -,” Remus said and took a sharp breath. “We can’t just wait. I have to write reports. Someone’s going to come over if we don’t make progress. They’re going to replace you with someone else.”  
  
“I’m not going to leave.”  
  
“Sure.”  
  
“I’m not. I mean it. Even if they tell me to.”  
  
Remus shifted and the couch winced.  
  
“I wanted to come back,” Sirius said. “Sometimes I felt I hadn’t left at all. I could just stay if I had…”  
  
“What?” Remus asked.  
  
“I don’t know.”  
  
“You don’t know?”  
  
“Yes,” Sirius said. He was still wearing his suit. Remus was wearing a pullover that had a raven on it. Sirius’ heart grew louder inside his head as he told himself he wasn’t 21 anymore, he was an adult or at least supposed to be one. He wasn’t a teenager who had a crush on this strange guy on a strange little town in the north border.  
  
“Don’t lie to me,” Remus said slowly, as if trying out every word before mouthing them.  
  
“I have a crush on you,” he said before he would run out of courage or idiocy.  
  
“A crush,” Remus said, stood up and walked to the kitchen, where he emptied the bottle leaning one hand against the counter and looking at the cupboard door with sad eyes and a frown. _A crush_ , Sirius thought and it rang false in his head, but surely that was what it was. What else could it be? How would he have known? Clearly he couldn’t tell Remus about the dream in which he didn’t know what had happened and what hadn’t and sometimes he couldn’t tell up from down and sometimes he thought he could smell Remus and feel the warmth of his skin and the texture of his fingers.  
  
“I know you’re with Tonks,” he said instead and Remus flinched.  
  
“Tonks.”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“Sirius –“  
  
“You don’t have to say anything,” he said quickly. “I won’t talk about it anymore. We could just do our job.”  
  
“We can’t,” Remus said, turning to face him. Remus’ hands were shaking now that he wasn’t holding the bottle anymore. “You’re right. I don’t know what to do because I think it’s happening again.”  
  
“Really?”  
  
Remus nodded. “But I couldn’t tell FBI that. And they sent you.”  
  
“You think it’s –“  
  
Remus nodded again.  
  
“What is it?” Sirius asked, lowering his voice because in the dark it looked like the trees were leaning towards them. “You must have an idea.”  
  
Remus stared at him.  
  
“Just tell me,” he said and stood up. “Please.”  
  
“No one knows,” Remus said, but Sirius walked to the kitchen and set himself in between the kitchen table and the counter, which was probably the nearest that he had ever been to Remus. He could see Remus’ breathing growing heavier. “I think it’s been here for a long time. In the woods.”  
  
“You think?”  
  
“It feels ancient,” Remus said and swallowed, and Sirius blinked, because apparently he was staring at Remus’ neck now. “Don’t you think?”  
  
“I don’t think it feels anything,” he said in a hollow voice.  
  
“But I’ve been here all my life,” Remus said, “and I’ve walked in the woods. I think I’ve run into it a couple of times. And it’s… this is just me, Sirius, this is me talking about things I know nothing about. But I think it was a human once. And now it’s much, much less.”  
  
“Or more.”  
  
“Or less,” Remus said, “I think it kills because it wants to live. It breaks humans apart so that it could take whatever it is that makes us living things.”  
  
“Why didn’t you tell me? At the first time? If you had guesses –“  
  
“I didn’t,” Remus cut in, “of course I didn’t. But I was there when Peter’s eyes went blank as if someone else was looking at us through him. And later… sometimes I think I’ve come close to it when I’ve been deep in the woods. But it feels like a dream afterwards.”  
  
“Maybe you shouldn’t go that deep in the woods.”  
  
Remus only looked at him.  
  
“What do we do?” he asked then.  
  
“Maybe you should go home,” Remus said.  
  
  
**  
  
  
In the morning, he woke up with a headache and a hollow feeling that he had lost something. Remus was in the shower, so he stayed on the couch, listening to the sound of running water and trying not to think about Remus standing in the bathtub with his fingers in his wet hair and his eyes closed and his skin slightly red, because the water was too hot. When Remus pushed the door open, walked to the kitchen and started making coffee with only a towel wrapped on his waist, Sirius wondered if perhaps Remus hadn’t understood him at all or perhaps didn’t care. He stood up and went to the bathroom where the air was still warm and humid and the shape of Remus’ bare feet lingered on the wet tile floor.  
  
“I have to break up with Tonks,” Remus said when they were in Remus’ car. It was a grey morning. The trees stood still on the sides of the road and the shape of the moon almost full still hang low in between the treetops.  
  
Sirius had to think it over, before he realized what Remus had said. Remus had his eyes fixed on the road and his face was blank as if he hadn’t said anything at all. “What?”  
  
“She is really nice,” Remus said, “but I can’t fix it.”  
  
“You can’t fix what?”  
  
“I don’t know.”  
  
“Why’re you telling me?”  
  
Remus glanced at him and then turned his gaze back ahead.  
  
“Shit,” Sirius said and imagined that the trees wavered a little. “This is –“  
  
“Too much?”  
  
“No,” he said, “of course not. But…”  
  
“You can’t sleep at my place tonight,” Remus said. “I’ll get your things in the afternoon and ask Molly to call the hotel.”  
  
Sirius blinked. “Do you want to ask Tonks to come over?”  
  
“No,” Remus said and glanced at him as if he was wondering why Sirius would even suggest it. “I’m away for the night.”  
  
“Away? Where?”  


Remus shook his head. “Doesn’t matter.”  
  
“Yes, it does,” Sirius said in a firmer voice than he had meant to, but then again, there was a murder investigation going on, he might need to find Remus if something turned up, and also Remus couldn’t just tell him that he was going to leave his girlfriend and then leave it like that. “Tell me.”  
  
“Sirius –“  
  
“What if something happens,” he said, “and I don’t know where you are?”  
  
“I’ll be back in the morning,” Remus said and blinked, “or probably in the afternoon. But Arthur’s going to be there. He’s very good with guns these days. We had to tell him to stop inventing new ones because they were getting dangerous.”  
  
“It’s not about that,” Sirius said. They were almost there. He had a bizarre feeling that he was running out of time. Soon he’d lose something even if he didn’t know what it was. “Please.”  
  
“No.”  
  
“No? Really? You aren’t going to tell me?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“Fucking hell,” he said and then bit his lip. “Remus, I’m sorry. I probably shouldn’t ask but –“  
  
“It’s not your fault,” Remus said in a blank voice, “it’s really not. But we can’t talk about it. Not here at least.”  
  
_Not here at least,_ Sirius thought and looked through the window, but the woods following the road seemed gentler in the light of the day, even if it was grey. _Perhaps we’re imagining it all._ But then they were at the yard and got out of the car and Molly brought them coffee and breakfast and Arthur brought them a gun that surely was illegal but also oddly functional. They went over the case of Cedric Diggory once again but there was nothing new and nothing to follow, and in some point Sirius found himself wondering if perhaps Cedric Diggory was nothing but the way in which the woods had pulled him back in, like gravity. He felt sorry for poor Cedric Diggory and then he felt sorry for himself for no reason at all. For so long Remus had said nothing more about Sirius going home. Perhaps Remus hadn’t meant it.  
  
In the afternoon, he thought Remus was getting sick, but when he asked Remus about it, Remus told him it was nothing and rushed in to talk to the coach of Cedric’s football team even though there was absolutely nothing the coach could tell them and Remus surely knew it. They were just running around because the thing they were looking for was hiding deep in the woods and possibly even deeper. He wondered if perhaps Remus was just nervous about breaking up with Tonks and then he wondered if Remus was really going to break up with Tonks or whether he was just talking, and also why the hell he’d have told Sirius that if he hadn’t meant it. It was probably a bad idea to start wondering why he felt like a mistress in this situation. They had never kissed, except in the dreams.  
  
“Why’re you going to break up with her?” he asked when they were drinking coffee at the side of the road, where Cedric had stopped with Cho for a few minutes _to admire a view_ like Cho had said. Remus flinched and Sirius felt immediately a bit better and then worse. It was afternoon already and Remus was pretty pale and sometimes looked like he was going to throw up.  
  
“Sirius,” Remus said.  
  
“You told me. I didn’t ask. But now I’m asking.”  
  
“It’s not what you think.”  
  
“I don’t have an idea what I think.”  
  
“I don’t know why we got together in the first place,” Remus said, looking at the place where Cedric’s car had probably been parked. “She liked me. I liked her. But you know how I am.”  
  
“No, I don’t.”  
  
Remus flinched. “Anyway, I can’t give her what she wants.”  
  
”And what’s that?”  
  
”I don’t know,” Remus said and frowned as if he was genuinely wondering.  
  
“Sex?” Sirius said without meaning to.  
  
“What?” Remus said and looked at him as if he had just done something impossible, which probably he had. Somewhere far away he could hear a bird he didn’t recognize singing in a low, ragged voice, but otherwise it was completely silent, and he was 34 years old and he had just asked Remus about sex, and Remus was looking at him as if he didn’t know what they were talking about, or couldn’t believe Sirius had the nerve.  
  
Sirius wondered if he ought to take it back but he didn’t have the time.  
  
“No,” Remus said and shook his head, “yes, of course. But I didn’t mean that.”  
  
_What_ , Sirius thought but bit his lip.  
  
“I can’t have sex with her,” Remus said,” but it’s not that. I thought you’d know. I think it’s got something to do with love.”  
  
“You can’t?” Sirius said in a blank voice that didn’t sound like his.  
  
“I don’t know,” Remus said. “I’m not going to try. Anyway, I can’t love her in a way I’m supposed to and that’s it. Are you hungry?”  
  
“No,” Sirius said. His ears were ringing.  
  
“Let’s go fishing,” Remus said, turned and walked to the car.  
  
  
**  
  
  
They were in the middle of the lake on a boat. Remus was rowing. He had been silent ever since they’d stopped the car at the side of the road and walked through the woods for a few minutes and then dragged the tiny boat to the water. Sirius hadn’t yet asked why they were here, which was of course bad and would look even worse if it appeared on a report, a special agent gone fishing in the middle of the work day with no fishing gear whatsoever. But every time he opened his mouth, Remus fixed him a sharp glare and he couldn’t say anything. Everywhere he looked at, he only saw water and dark green spruces looking at them.  
  
When Remus finally talked, it was like the water and the woods all around swallowed his voice. “Now,” he said and looked at Sirius.  
  
“Now what?” Sirius said.  
  
“Now ask me again.”  
  
“About sex?”  
  
“No,” Remus said with a frown. “Of course not. I thought you were concerned about me going away for the night.”  
  
“I thought you weren’t going to tell me.”  
  
Remus shrugged.  
  
“Okay,” Sirius said, because there was something odd in the way Remus was watching him. Remus looked almost terrified. But it couldn’t be because he’d never seen Remus terrified, not even when they’d seen the thing looking back at them through Peter Pettigrew’s eyes. “Where will you go?”  
  
“Into the woods,” Remus said immediately.  
  
Sirius blinked. It felt like a prank. But everything was quiet and the water was still and Remus was paler than ever.  
  
“Why?” he asked because clearly he was supposed to.  
  
“There’s a cabin,” Remus said almost soundlessly, “deep in the woods. I’ll take this boat and row until I reach the opposite shore and then I’ll walk until I’m there. I have chains put in the walls. I’ll lock myself up.”  
  
“ _What?_ ”  
  
“The moon is almost full,” Remus said. “Look.”  
  
Sirius turned. Above the trees there was a pale full moon lingering, barely visible through the clouds.  
  
“I’ll come back in the morning,” Remus said, “but it takes time. Walking, I mean. And rowing.”  
  
“I don’t get it,” Sirius said. He had a hollow feeling as if something had been carved out of him.  
  
“Don’t tell anyone.”  
  
“What the hell would I tell them?” he asked, but Remus only watched him.  
  
Remus rowed back to the shore and then they walked through the forest again. It was so quiet in there that their steps echoed on and on. Sirius kept glancing over his shoulder but Remus wasn’t looking at anything anymore or so it seemed, especially not at him and especially not in the eyes. They drove back in silence that felt like the end of things, and then in the sheriff’s department Remus drank three cups of coffee and told Sirius to get to the car again. They went to Remus’ place to get his luggage and took them to the hotel. Then they drove back and Remus stopped once to throw up at the side of the road but didn’t say anything about it and Sirius didn’t ask. He thought vaguely that perhaps he’d never ask again. For the rest of the evening he went through papers Remus had given him, probably to distract him because the more he read the less he had a clue about who had killed Cedric Diggory if not the thing that couldn’t be named. He drove to the hotel and felt unbearably lonely, and there he realized he had left his toothbrush in Remus’ bathroom.  
  
  
**  
  
  
“Diane,” Sirius said and put the record on, “it’s seven am and I’m in the Great Northern Hotel again. I say again, because as you remember, this is where I slept in 1981 when I was in Twin Peaks. Nothing has changed with the possible exception of myself. The forecast says that the sun is going to shine today. I suppose we’ll see about that. I slept poorly but somehow I’m now quite awaken and feel as if possibly some parts of yesterday didn’t happen at all. Diane, I’m going to tell you something highly confidential. I think Remus Lupin took me to the lake yesterday and told me that every full moon he goes to the cabin deep in the woods and locks himself up. I’d say he was kidding but, Diane, I think Remus Lupin might be the only person in the whole world who’s completely incapable of that.”  
  
He breathed in and took a sip of his glass of milk.  
  
“Sorry. That was badly overestimated. As you probably remember, Diane, my thoughts regarding Remus Lupin are not to be completely trusted. I have a reason to believe that I may have been in love with him since 1981. I believe I have never said this aloud but I trust that you’ll tell no one. And when I say _in love_ , I mean that it feels like my life is mixed with his and every memory that I have about him sticks with me and changes with time and grows stronger and weirder. I can’t trust myself when it comes to him. Yesterday he told me something impossible and I don’t know what to think about it, because he was looking at me as if he was deeply afraid of something, possibly me, and as if he was telling me something important.”  
  
There was a distant pain behind his eyes. He rubbed them and then stood up and put on a clean shirt. Perhaps he should embrace this with logic. He was a special agent and he was here only because a mysterious murder had happened and anyway it was against regulations to have intimate relations with local sheriffs. He should forget about it.  
  
“Also, Diane,” he said when he had already packed all his things, “the milk in this place tastes exactly like it used to, which is brilliant.”  
  
When he parked his car in front of the sheriff’s department, the sun was shining through the trees, so that the whole yard seemed to be painted with stripes of light. He walked above them. Molly was sitting behind the counter.  
  
“Good morning, Molly,” he said.  
  
“Good morning, Agent Black,” Molly said. “Did you sleep well?”  
  
“Sufficiently so,” Sirius said. “Is Sheriff Lupin here yet?”  
  
“No,” Molly said and frowned, “I’m afraid he won’t be here before afternoon. I thought he told you.”  
  
_I have chains put in the walls_ , Remus had told him.  
  
“Of course,” he said and smiled his best smile. Molly seemed relieved. “I forgot. Can you bring me coffee, Molly? I’m going to go over some old files this morning.”  
  
“I have donuts as well,” Molly said. “I’ll bring them to the conference room in a few minutes.”  
  
“I’m going to be in the sheriff’s office this morning,” Sirius said. “Bring them there. Thank you, Molly.”  
  
It turned out that he had to place the coffee and the donuts on a chair, because Remus’ desk just wasn’t big enough. Molly looked at him as if she wasn’t completely sure about his intentions but closed the door anyway, and he thought vaguely that Remus’ office probably smelled like Remus and also he wasn’t supposed to think about that. He filled the desk with old papers and kept drinking coffee and also coughing, because every time he moved those papers, he got his mouth full of dust.  
  
James Potter had been a handsome guy with deep brown eyes, black tight curls and a grin that suggested he knew the photographer. Perhaps it had been Remus himself. In one of the pictures they were all there, James and Lily Potter with their baby boy who apparently was crying, and Remus who looked impossibly young and also happier than Sirius had ever seen him, and Peter who looked like a perfectly normal young man in a pullover that didn’t quite fit. Behind the picture there was _September 1981_ written with Remus’ neat handwriting. Maybe Remus had had the picture in a photo album before it had turned into an evidence of a murder case.  
  
He had never met that Remus. When he had first come to Twin Peaks in November, Remus had looked like he hadn’t slept in two days which probably had been true. Also he hadn’t smiled. He had been the oldest 21-year-old Sirius had ever met and oddly fixating, which had become more and more obvious in the years to come.  
  
“Diane,” Sirius said in a low voice, so that Molly couldn’t hear him through the door, “I’m sitting in the sheriff’s office. My intention is to look for parallels between the cases of James and Lily Potter and Cedric Diggory. But my concentration is quite poor today. I’m mildly concerned whether I’m still fit to work with this case. My personal feelings for –“  
  
“Sheriff Lupin,” Molly’s voice echoed from the hallway. “You’re early.”  
  
Sirius put the recorder into his pocket and stood up. He didn’t hear Remus’ answer but then the steps came forward until Remus pushed the door open, walked in, closed the door again and then just stood there, staring at him. He glanced at the desk and then turned the picture of James, Lily, Harry, Peter and Remus around.  
  
“What’re you doing?” Remus asked in a hoarse voice that was barely audible.  
  
“Looking for parallels,” Sirius said, “between the cases. You look bad.”  
  
“Parallels?”  
  
“You have dried blood on your neck.”  
  
“I tried to wash it,” Remus said. “What parallels?”  
  
“You said you’d row back and then walk through the forest and that it’d probably take until the afternoon.”  
  
“I ran. Of course there’re parallels. I don’t think it’s going to help us.”  
  
“Can I sleep in your place tonight?”  
  
Remus blinked. “Yes.”  
  
“Great,” Sirius said and tried to put all the papers back to the pile but something dropped to the floor. He picked it up. It was a picture of Lily Potter in her prom night. He put Lily Potter on the pile with her face down and then straightened his back. “We’ll drive to the hotel and get my things and then we’ll drive to your place and you’ll eat something.”  
  
“I don’t have any food.”  
  
“Then we’ll go to the diner.”  
  
“No,” Remus said, “I’ll figure out something. But we’re at work.”  
  
“We know who killed Cedric Diggory,” Sirius said, “of course we know. We just can’t report it because we don’t know its name and also because it doesn’t really exist. Now, will you follow me or do you want me to tell Molly to call the doctor to check those wounds?”  
  
Remus followed him through the hallway and to the car and to the hotel where Sirius had packed his things already in the morning, even though of course he hadn’t planned that he’d go back to Remus’. He checked out and Remus stood beside him, quiet and as pale as yesterday but somehow not so focused. In the car, Remus leaned his neck against the back of the seat and sighed and Sirius could see the scars on his throat. He wondered if Remus pulled a gun on him if he touched them but didn’t try it.  
  
He drove to the diner at first and bought two hamburgers to go, even though Remus said he wasn’t hungry. Soon the car smelled of hamburgers and Remus looked like he was going to throw up but he didn’t. Remus hands shook a little when he opened the door to his house. There Remus sat down on the sofa and took breaths that sounded like something was stuck on his throat, and Sirius made coffee and then sat next to him and tried to make him eat the hamburger but he refused.  
  
“Okay,” Sirius said, when Remus was drinking black coffee with eyes closed, “the wounds, then.”  
  
“Don’t worry about them.”  
  
“Where’re they?”  
  
Remus flinched. “Everywhere.”  
  
“So, get your clothes off or I’ll file a report that you completely ignored your poor condition that seriously affected your work.”  
  
Remus glanced at him. “You wouldn’t.”  
  
“I would,” he said, even though he really wouldn’t and both of them knew it. “Just let me help.”  
  
“Fine,” Remus said and took the pullover off. Sirius tried not to look surprised and probably failed. Remus dropped the pullover onto the floor and then looked at him as if saying _now what_.  
  
“Now, the t-shirt,” he said, even though Remus had wounds on his arms as well and perhaps it’d have been easier to start with those. But Remus did what he had asked, and he stared at the wounds that went all over Remus’ upper body and looked as if some big animal had clawed him. Most of them weren’t bleeding anymore. Some were narrow, just scratches. But a few were still dripping blood on Remus’ chest and there were brands of dried blood that followed down his sides and his stomach and under the waistline of his underpants.  
  
“You haven’t cleaned these,” Sirius said. “You should have.”  
  
“I wanted to get back to work,” Remus said, looking at him. His eyes looked tired.  
  
“We should probably go the bathroom.”  
  
Remus stood up and followed him without a word, which was concerning but he decided not to think about it now. In the bathroom, Remus sat on a closed toilet seat and closed his eyes as Sirius cleaned the wounds one by one. Probably he wasn’t very good at this but Remus didn’t complain, only flinched a few times and took sharp breaths. When Sirius followed the line of the wound going down on Remus’ stomach and under the waistline of his underpants, Remus stood up and undid the zipper without looking at him. His pulse was unprofessionally rapid and he had to clear his throat, but then Remus folded his trousers and set them aside on the tile floor, and he began cleaning the wound that went down Remus’ thigh. Next to it was something that looked like a bite mark.  
  
“Remus,” he said without thinking.  
  
“Yeah?” Remus said. He sounded like he had given up.  
  
“What bit you?”  
  
“I can’t tell you.”  
  
“But yesterday –“  
  
“I can’t talk about it here.”  
  
“But you told me that –“  
  
“Yeah,” Remus said very quietly. “But we were on the lake. Nothing can hear us on the lake.”  
  
“So, what you told me –“  
  
“Don’t ask me that.”  
  
He placed his palm on Remus’ thigh. Remus flinched, but he kept his hand as still as he could even though Remus was shivering slightly, possibly from the cold, probably not.  
  
“I’ll ask something else instead,” he said and stretched his fingers so that he could cover the bite mark. “The night we lost Peter in the woods I thought you’d kiss me.”  
  
“Sirius,” Remus said in a ragged voice.  
  
“You have to answer one question. Either one. Did you? Would you have? Would you have kissed me? Or, was it true?”  
  
“Yes,” Remus said.  
  
“What?” he said in a dry voice. Remus’ thigh stilled when he ran his palm slowly down. Remus’ skin was full of old scars, most of which he couldn’t see underneath the soft brown hair but he could feel them beneath his fingertips.  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“Yes to which question?”  
  
Remus almost smiled. Sirius tightened his fingers around Remus’ ankle where his hand happened to be at the moment, and Remus took a sharp breath.  
  
“I would have,” Remus said, eyes closed, voice quiet as if it wasn’t meant to be heard, “but we filed a report and you left. And it’s against… you might’ve lost your job. And I’m not… I’m not very…”  
  
“You aren’t what?”  
  
“Good,” Remus said and glanced at him briefly. “I’m not very good. For anyone. And you know why.”  
  
“No, I don’t.”  
  
“Yes, you do,” Remus said. “I told you. Yesterday. At the lake.”  
  
_Fucking hell_ , Sirius thought and stroke the scarred skin on Remus’ legs. “These scars. They look like someone clawed you.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“An animal.”  
  
“Me,” Remus said.  
  
“No,” Sirius said, but Remus only looked at him.  
  
_It’s not possible_ , he thought but didn’t say aloud, because that didn’t seem to mean much anymore. He kept stroking Remus’ legs and then his thighs as well and Remus didn’t say anything, only breathed deep in and out later as Sirius placed his palm on Remus’ stomach and kept it there. When they finally went back to the living room, the wind had raised a little and there were branches knocking on the windows which they kept firmly closed. Remus ate his hamburger even though it was cold, and then they talked a bit about Cedric Diggory.  
  
“I can smell it,” Remus said.  
  
“What?” Sirius asked and thought about the hamburger.  
  
“ _It_ ,” Remus said, “the thing. The thing in the woods. When I’m in… in my cabin. I can smell it from my cabin when I’m changed.”  
  
_Changed into what_ , Sirius thought although he’d probably never ask. “Really?”  
  
“Yeah. Sometimes it’s near. Sometimes it’s far. Sometimes I can’t even smell it and then I think it’s… you know. Inside someone. Like it was inside Peter. It smells as old as the woods but more…”  
  
“More what?”  
  
“Evil,” Remus said, looking like he was embarrassed about even saying so now that they were living in the modern world. “But it smells like a human underneath. I think it was a human once. But now it’s something else. It doesn’t smell like a living thing.”  
  
“Why’re you telling me?” Sirius said and then cleared his throat. “You didn’t tell me the last time.”  
  
“I’m lonely,” Remus said and closed his eyes.  
  
  
**  
  
  
“You’re even messier than him,” said the woman from the door.  
  
Sirius raised his eyes from the papers he’d spread out on Remus’ desk. Nymphadora Tonks was standing in the doorway. Her hair had been dyed pink. “Evening. If you’re looking for –“  
  
“I drove by,” Tonks said and smiled at him. He smiled back but it felt like cheating. Clearly Remus hadn’t broken up with her yet. “I haven’t seen Remus in a few days so I thought I’d say hi. He’s been pretty busy with you.”  
  
“He’s going to come back in a few minutes. He only went to –“  
  
“I think he likes you,” Tonks said. Sirius felt as if he was going to have a stomach cramp. “He probably won’t tell you that but he does. I can see it. He’s been happier than in the long time now that you’ve been here, even with the murder investigation going on.”  
  
“He’s been unhappy?” Sirius said in a thin voice.  
  
“Yes,” Tonks said and shrugged, “he’s like that. I think some people are sad underneath, you know, in a way that can’t be fixed. But he’s been happier now that you’ve come back.”  
  
_Don’t tell me that,_ he thought. A few hours earlier he’d been sitting on the sofa in Remus’ house, watching Remus pulling his clothes back on, and his pulse had been uncomfortably fast and he had kept thinking perhaps they would kiss now that he’d been waiting for it for thirteen years. He blinked and smiled at Tonks as friendly as he could, but it felt as if his face wasn’t really moving.  
  
“I think we’re going to be friends,” Tonks said, “you and me. We’re already related. I called my mother and asked her. We’re second cousins or something like that.”  
  
Sirius nodded. Perhaps Tonks could read his thoughts and that was why she was saying all those things. Odder things had happened than that. She was beautiful and had clever eyes and a habit of smiling constantly but in a crooked way that made her look like she was holding something back. If Sirius had met her in a bar, he’d probably have gone to talk to her. He swallowed but the knot in his stomach stayed.  
  
“Hi,” Remus said. He was holding a grey file in his hands as he stopped in the doorway and looked at them.  
  
“Hi,” Tonks said. “I came to see you.”  
  
“Oh”, Remus said, walked to the desk and dropped the file onto the rest of the papers. The layer of dust winced. Sirius watched as Remus took four steps to Tonks and then placed his right hand on her shoulder and leaned in to kiss her. He closed his eyes.  
  
“Do you want to come over later?” Tonks asked.  
  
Sirius blinked. Remus was looking at him.  
  
“I’m sorry,” Remus said at Tonks. “I think we’re going to work pretty late. And Sirius is staying at my place anyway.”  
  
_Fucking hell_ , Sirius thought, but Tonks only smiled and said something about good television and dishes and then went. They heard her footsteps going down the hallway and then she stopped to say something about the government to Molly. Remus was still standing in the middle of the room. The door was open. Sirius opened the grey file but he had trouble trying to remember what they were looking for.  
  
“Molly is friends with her,” Remus said later, when they were driving and the woods around them were all dark and quiet and the headlights got sunk into the black asphalt. “She came over to talk about something with Molly and then sometimes Molly pulled me in. I think she realized something was wrong with me but she tried to fix it in a wrong way. But Tonks kept talking to me. She’s twenty years old. She doesn’t have this, you know, this dark thing inside of her, at least I don’t think she does. Or maybe I don’t see it because I don’t look at her closely enough. But she makes me feel more normal.”  
  
That was probably the most Remus had ever said to Sirius. “Okay,” he said.  
  
“We aren’t having sex,” Remus said.  
  
Sirius breathed in. It was too dark in here. Perhaps in the winter there would be snow, but he wouldn’t be here anymore.  
  
“Sirius?”  
  
“You aren’t having sex. I heard you.”  
  
Remus glanced at him. The trees seemed to lean closer above the road. Sirius waited for a long time but Remus didn’t say anything else which probably meant that he had to ask.  
  
“Why?”  
  
“It’s not that I don’t want to,” Remus said immediately, “I think. But it’s like something’s been drained from me, since… you know. Since 1981. And there’s this black spot that’s inside of me now.”  
  
“So, you want to have sex with her.”  
  
“That’s not the point.”  
  
“I think it kind of is,” Sirius said. He felt impossibly tired.  
  
Remus kept quiet for a long time and then when he finally talked, he said, “I’m going to leave her.”  
  
“Fine.”  
  
“I am. I’ll just have to figure out how to do it.”  
  
“Fine.”  
  
“I don’t think I’m going to have sex with anyone. It’s probably not about her. Something’s wrong with me.”  
  
“Me, too.”  
  
“No,” Remus said, “You have a chance. You left this place. You went on with your life for thirteen years.”  
  
“Sometimes I thought I was in a dream.”  
  
“Sometimes I think I’m a monster who’s only playing human from time to time,” Remus said and slowed down. Sirius blinked and then realized that they were already at Remus’ place. “Do you want some coffee?”  
  
“Yes,” he said.  
  
Remus parked the car. Sirius followed him to the house. The hallway echoed oddly. Probably it’d have been wiser if he’d told Remus he’d rather stay at the hotel, but he couldn’t make himself do it, not now that Remus closed the door in what seemed to be slow motion, and then walked to the coffee machine without looking at him. He walked around the room and tried not to keep throwing glances at Remus. He considered opening the top button of his shirt but decided against it. Then he stopped in front of the window and realized there was a picture on the window sill, a boy who looked exactly like James Potter but with green eyes.  
  
“Is this –“  
  
“Yeah,” Remus said from the kitchen.  
  
“So, this is James and Lily’s –“  
  
“Harry,” Remus said. “That’s him.”  
  
Sirius swallowed. His mouth felt dry. The last time he’d seen the boy had been in 1981, when Remus had picked Harry up from the floor and then held him for a few seconds before giving him to Peter’s arms. “You’ve kept in touch with him?”  
  
There was a noise from the kitchen, and Sirius glanced over his shoulder. Remus had dropped coffee onto the counter and was now trying to dry it with his sleeve. “Harry lives with Molly and Arthur. I should have told you. They have a son who’s pretty much the same age than Harry so it’s really…”  
  
“Yes,” he said.  
  
“Convenient,” Remus said and pressed his palms against the counter as if trying to hold something in. “I couldn’t take him, you know, to live with me. I had my job and no one to help me with the boy and of course… this thing about me. I wouldn’t have been a very good… father.”  
  
“I’m sure you’d make a wonderful father,” Sirius said without thinking and then frowned. He had an odd feeling that a long time ago in a different life which probably was the city, someone had tried to hit on him with that line.  
  
“No,” Remus said, shaking his head. “But I don’t think James and Lily would see it that way. Of course, Peter was the godfather but when he… died, I should have….”  
  
“If I lost my parents, I think I’d like Molly and Arthur to adopt me.”  
  
Remus took a somewhat ragged sigh. “Thanks.”  
  
“Anytime,” Sirius said, “but I mean it. Would you give me a cup of coffee?”  
  
Remus gave him the mug and their fingers brushed briefly against each other. Remus probably didn’t even notice. Sirius walked to the sofa and sat down and tried not think about anything at all.  
  
“Sirius,” Remus said, watching him from the kitchen, from behind his mug of coffee.  
  
“Sex,” he said and it came out of his mouth rushed and sudden. He swallowed. Remus didn’t inch so perhaps it had been obvious that they’d talk about it more. “Why would you think that you wouldn’t…”  
  
“Ask me,” Remus said after a few heartbeats of silence.  
  
“You said there’s something wrong with you,” Sirius said. Outside, the wind grew, pushing the branches of the nearest trees against the window. “What’s wrong with you?”  
  
“I don’t think I’m a human,” Remus said, looking straight at him. “Not completely. Not anymore.”  
  
“That can’t be the reason,” he said even though the other thing was on his mouth, _what are you?  
  
_ “I might hurt someone.”  
  
“No.”  
  
“And sometimes I think it’s a lot of fuss about nothing,” Remus said in a loader voice. “You’ve probably done it. You could tell me.”  
  
Sirius couldn’t make himself remember when was the last time that he’d had sex. He kept thinking _in 1981,_ but it hadn’t really happened, except in the dreams afterwards.  
  
“Tell me,” Remus said.  
  
“I had this dream,” Sirius said and stood up, and then the wind pushed the window open. The glass shook but didn’t shatter. Remus glanced at Sirius and then placed his mug on the table with steady hands, walked to the window and closed it even though the curtains kept clinging into him in the wind. Sirius looked at his own hands. They were shaking and the coffee was shaking in the mug as well. He drank it as quickly as he could and burned his tongue.  
  
“I think we should go to sleep,” Remus said, not looking at him. “Maybe you’d like to take a shower.”  
  
“Yes,” he said, stood up and placed his coat on the back of the chair.  
  
When he came back, Remus was sitting on the sofa, holding his recorder and slowly raising his eyes onto him.  
  
“Who’s Diane?” Remus asked.  
  
  
**  
  
  
_As you probably remember, Diane, my thoughts regarding Remus Lupin are not to be completely trusted. I have a reason to believe that I may have been in love with him since 1981…_  
  
Remus stopped the recorder and then rewound it.  
  
_My thoughts regarding Remus Lupin…_  
  
“Stop that,” Sirius said. “Please.”  
  
“I moved the chair and it dropped from your pocket,” Remus said, looking at the recorder.  
  
_Yesterday he told me something impossible,_ Sirius’ voice was saying in the recording, _and I don’t know what to think about it because he was looking at me as if he was deeply afraid of something, possibly me, and as if he was telling me something important._ And then there was a short silence and after that he began describing his lunch.  
  
“It’s true,” Remus said and stopped the recorder. “What I told you is true. Or at least it happens to me. And I’m afraid of you.”  
  
“Why’re you afraid of me?” Sirius asked and took a step closer. He had a towel wrapped around his waist and he was dripping water onto Remus’ carpet.  
  
“I don’t know,” Remus said.  
  
“What do you think would happen if we -,” Sirius said and cleared his throat, “if we had sex?” _  
_    
“I don’t know.”  
  
“Sometimes I have these dreams,” Sirius said, and Remus shook his head but kept looking at his toes. “And sometimes they feel real. You have me on my back on the wooden floor.”  
  
“I wouldn’t,” Remus said and closed his eyes.  
  
“Or somewhere else. It doesn’t matter. Sometimes we’re in the woods. Sometimes we’re nowhere as if you are everything that there is. And sometimes later I still think I can smell you.”  
  
“That’s not possible.”  
  
“Listen to me. I’m on my back, here on the floor. On the carpet. You have your hand behind my neck and the other one… the other one is holding me. I had this towel but now it’s dropped on the floor. You have… you are…”  
  
“ _Sirius._ ”  
  
“The last time I was here,” Sirius said, “in 1981, I wanted to kiss you so badly.”  
  
Remus drew in a deep breath and then opened his eyes. “This can’t happen.”  
  
“I know,” Sirius said.  
  
“You can place the towel on the armrest,” Remus said.  
  
Sirius swallowed. The wind had gone quiet. Remus looked at him and breathed in and out, in and out, and his chest rose and fell with it, and the room smelled of coffee and Remus’ shampoo that Sirius had borrowed in the shower. He placed the towel on the armrest of the sofa, and Remus stood up and walked to him and kissed him so softly it barely happened. He stared at Remus for a few seconds afterwards and Remus stared back at him and then kissed him again until he had to pull back to breathe.  
  
Later, he lay on his back on the floor. Remus had a condom and some Vaseline and Sirius almost laughed because that made it look as if Remus had planned it all along, or as if it had always been going to happen one day, which possibly it had. Or maybe it was just that Remus had those sad blue eyes that kept looking at him thoroughly, as if what they were doing at the moment was the most difficult thing in the whole world, and possibly the most frightening and the most important as well, and he thought _I’m in love with this man because how could I not be,_ and then Remus was inside of him. In the dreams it had hurt less. He smelled the sweat on Remus’ skin and heard Remus breathing heavily, and he could touch Remus’ hair, Remus’ neck, Remus’ back, everything in Remus as if they really were here right now doing this, until Remus grabbed the both of his wrists and pressed them against the floor in a gesture that wasn’t perfectly polite. He bit his own lip and then Remus leaned down and bit it for him.  
  
“What’re we doing?” he asked, only he had to breathe in between the words so there were gaps.  
  
“Hold still,” Remus said.  
  
“I think I’m in love with you.”  
  
“And don’t speak.”  
  
“Come on,” he said, and Remus placed his palm on his face and his thumb on his mouth. Possibly it was supposed to keep him quiet. He tried to close his eyes but couldn’t because then everything went distant, and so he kept his eyes on Remus. His heart grew louder and louder until there was nothing else.  
  
When he came, Remus grabbed his shoulders and pushed into him a few more times before gasping almost soundlessly and laying down onto him. Everything was very still, and then Remus phone rang. Sirius watched through his half-closed eyelids how Remus pulled himself away from him and got up onto his feet and walked to the phone and then said _Sheriff Lupin_ as if he hadn’t been standing there naked.  
  
“Okay,” Remus said. “Fine. I see. We’ll be there. Fifteen minutes.”  
  
“What?” Sirius asked and thought about sitting up, but he was laying on the floor and something was slowly running down his thighs and he could still smell Remus in his fingers and in the room and he didn’t feel as if he fully existed.  
  
“Molly called,” Remus said, slowly turning to Sirius. His face was blank. “They found a body in the river. It’s Peter.”  
  
  
**  
  
  
The funeral was beautiful. The sun was shining. The birds were singing. No one said a word about Peter having been missing for the last thirteen years. No one said a word about the murders of James and Lily Potter and Cedric Diggory. Peter’s mother talked about how he had always loved squirrels and other small animals. The priest talked about how Peter had been an essential part of this community, a part that now was gone but would stay in the memories of people who’d loved him. Remus was wearing his uniform and held hands with Tonks the whole time. Molly cried a little and Peter’s mother gave her a napkin. When the coffin was deep in the ground, everyone fell quiet except the birds who sang louder.  
  
Sirius stayed further away, under a pine tree that gave him a pretty decent shadow. Later, he sat in his car for more than an hour, until Remus walked out of Peter’s mother’s house without Tonks. He swallowed. Remus didn’t look at him but walked straight at the car anyway, opened the door and sat down next to him.  
  
“What do we do now?” he said.  
  
“I don’t know,” Remus said. He had dark red marks under his eyes. He hadn’t slept for more than two hours at time since they had driven to the morgue that one night and then stood there, side by side, looking at Peter’s body. This morning, Remus had drunk three mugs of coffee.  
  
“At least we aren’t looking for Peter anymore.”  
  
“No,” Remus said in a tired voice. “Maybe it’s gone deep in the woods again. I don’t think there’s a way to find it.”  
  
“But you can smell it at the full moon.”  
  
“Sometimes I don’t,” Remus said and rubbed his temples with his right thumb, “and then I think that maybe it’s in me. Maybe that’s why I can’t smell it.”  
  
“It’s not in you.”  
  
“You don’t know that.”  
  
“Yes, I do,” he said. This morning, he had kissed Remus and Remus had grabbed him by his wrists and held him still. Last night, he had had a dream in which they were living in a cabin in the woods. The sun shone through the windows and they were happy.  
  
“Don’t be stupid,” Remus said.  
  
“I know you,” Sirius said and opened the radio which had an old gospel song on.  
  
“I should go back inside,” Remus said. “They’re going to miss me.”  
  
“I got a call today,” Sirius said. “They’re waiting for me in the city tomorrow.”  
  
Remus glanced at him. The sun was so bright it almost hurt.  
  
“I don’t know how to say goodbye,” he said.  
  
“Then don’t,” Remus said and walked out of the car and back to the house which swallowed him and looked perfectly calm and happy in the sunlight.  
  
Sirius drove away faster than he should have but still he had an odd feeling that he’d never get anywhere. The road would always go back. After twenty miles, he turned. There was mist hanging low in the woods and on the road, and the trees were watching him.

**Author's Note:**

> You can say hi to me on [tumblr](http://toyhto.tumblr.com)! :)


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